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Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.

Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.

I agree. Although I still use Facebook I’m much more careful about it than I used to be. I’m also not sure that makes any difference.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats

“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

Am I the only who thinks the US-based social media & the "opt out" orientation of our businesses toward privacy have made much of the technology we use to interact with each other (Facebook, Google, etc) and use in our everyday lives a fairly serious privacy risk?

Working in IT Sec, the more I read about GDPR and it's requirements to ensure privacy - think of it as HIPAA for everyday life - the more I realize the privacy of Americans was either mostly ignored, or more blatantly, we've been sold to the highest bidder or worse (Cambridge Analytica).

I basically stopped using FB when the CA story came out.

There's still a demand for the connectivity that Facebook provides, but they're so far behind the curve on security I don't think it's recoverable, and for completely different reasons, youngsters are going away in masses. Looking for a EU-based alternative that will take privacy seriously, which I think a lot of Americans would be interested in hoping onto.

This all reminds me it was the Germans who discovered Google was capturing information on home WiFi networks via Google Maps' and their Streetview rolling cameras.

I wish I had confidence America had the political will to address privacy. I just don't think it exists, and leadership on IT Sec for the masses will have to come from outside the US.

I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle on this one.

Aside from social media it is over two decades in of global and widespread use of email and it is STILL not even remotely secure and no viable options are getting support or adoption.

"Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape."

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats

“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats

“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats

“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

Facebook has said it will end a controversial market research program in which the company paid users to install a mobile app that tracked their activity and data.

In a statement given to TechCrunch and other websites, the company said that its "Facebook Research" app, which paid volunteers between the ages of 13 and 35 up to $20 a month to access nearly all their data, would no longer be available on iOS.

The news came just hours after TechCrunch's exposé on the Facebook app, which used an enterprise certificate on iPhones to get people to sideload the app and skirt Apple's App Store rules. In the same announcement, the company also took issue with the way its "Project Atlas" program had been reported, claiming:

Facebook is facing the wrath of Apple today for misusing an enterprise certificate meant for internal use to get Facebook users to sideload a data harvesting "Facebook Research" app that violates App Store policies, and as it turns out, Google has been doing the exact same thing.

According to TechCrunch, Google has been distributing an app called "Screenwise Meter" using the enterprise certificate installation method since 2012.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats

“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”